Stan Nicholls - Army of Shadows

"If these dwarfs don't try to stop us we'll find ourselves a good defensible holdout first thing. We'll be better prepared if they come again."

"Against the magic they have?" She paused a moment before braving the next thing she wanted to say. "Stryke, about the stars…"

"What about them?"

"Given they're precious, and now we might have this new bunch trying to get their hands on them, why don't you divide them up between five of us and — "

"No."

"Don't just dismiss it, Stryke. It could be a good way of protecting the things."

"If we lost just one, that's enough to make the others useless."

"This isn't just about you, you know. The stars are our only way home too."

" No, Coilla. Not after what happened last time."

"You're blaming me for that, are you?"

"You know I'm not. How could I when I lost four of them to Jennesta myself?"

"So you won't consider it?"

"It's better my way."

"You can be such a stubborn pig sometimes!" she flared. "When are you going to get it through your head that — "

There was a commotion outside. They heard shouts and screams.

Rushing to the door, they saw dozens of dwarfs running in all directions in panic.

The band flooded out of the longhouse. At sea, a flotilla of small boats was heading for the shore. In the distance, a ship was at anchor.

The Wolverines headed for the beach. There were more dwarfs there, desperate to get away from the advancing boats. They stopped a few to ask what was going on, but got no sense out of them.

"Look!" Coilla yelled, pointing at the nearest boats.

They were manned by humans.

"I'm guessing it's not a social visit either," Stryke observed.

"Now we know why the dwarfs aren't keen on Jode and Standeven."

A number of male dwarfs were now running onto the beach as opposed to away from it. They were armed with their spears.

"What do we do?" Dallog asked.

"We make a stand with them," Stryke replied, "what else?"

"Pity they've got nobody operating those trebuchets." The corporal pointed to the ledge on the volcano.

"No time. They've been caught unawares."

"Yeah," Coilla agreed, "probably because they were too concerned with us."

"Here they come!" Haskeer bellowed.

The first of the humans were wading ashore.

"So let's get to it," Stryke ordered, drawing his sword. "Come on!" He lead them into the surf. Only Standeven held back, skulking far up the beach.

They met the invaders in knee-deep water and laid into them. The humans were shocked to be facing an unknown race, and one so ferocious, and were equally dismayed to find Pepperdyne among their attackers. That gave the band an initial edge. Soon the surf was stained red.

But it didn't take long for Stryke to realise he'd made an error. This wasn't the incomers' main or only force. Further along the shoreline more boats had come round the island's curve. Humans had already got well inland in that direction. They were fighting dwarfs on the beach, and the dwarfs weren't coming off best.

Stryke ordered some of the band to stay where they were and finish off the dwindling number of humans still exchanging blows. He took the rest up the beach to confront the bigger influx happening there. Spurral, who had proved a good runner, had seen what was happening and streaked off even before he issued the order. She was well to the fore and not far short of a group of humans wading ashore.

Running abreast with Haskeer, Jup and Coilla, and with the other band members on their heels, Stryke yelled a warning. A party of humans who must already have penetrated the island's interior were returning to the beach, and their path crossed the Wolverines'. The humans, perhaps twenty strong, were dragging and carrying screaming dwarfs towards the waves.

Stryke's band and the kidnappers all but collided. Startled by the sudden appearance of a group of creatures they were unlikely to have encountered before, the humans let go of their captives to defend themselves. The freed dwarfs, most of them young, began fleeing back into the jungle.

The warband tore into the boatmen, savagely hacking them down. Pepperdyne, taking a great swipe with his blade, parted one of them from his head. Haskeer, employing both hatchet and knife, hurtled into a duo simultaneously, stabbing one and braining the other. Dallog plunged his spear into a foe with such force it lifted the man off his feet. Even Wheam gave a good account of himself, in Wheam terms. He managed no fatalities, but attacked with gusto and inflicted mean wounds on a couple of opponents.

They worked as fast as they could to get through the obstruction and reach the greater number of humans beyond, where more struggling dwarfs were being hurled into the humans' bobbing craft.

As the last man in their path was downed and dispatched, several of the grunts started raising a clamour. Stryke and the others looked to where they were frantically pointing.

Out in deep water, Spurral was grappling with three men. As the band watched, they pummelled her senseless and flung her into a boat, then hauled themselves aboard.

" Shit! " Jup cried. He began running.

The band took off in his wake, arms pumping, heads down.

A burly human tried blocking Jup's way. He cracked the man's skull open with his staff while barely breaking step. He ran on, splashing into the water.

"Spurral!" he shouted. "Spurral!"

The boat she was in had begun moving away, four men pulling mightily on the oars.

Jup was wading now, finding the going harder the farther he got. Breakers battered him and he almost lost his footing.

The others were close behind. By the time they caught up with him he was more than chest high and battling impotently against the water's sluggish impediment.

They saw Spurral's boat, along with dozens of others bearing snatched dwarfs, rapidly departing.

All they could do was watch helplessly as it headed for the ship waiting on the horizon.

Jup was frantic, and seethed with a cold fury, but knew that keeping his head was the best hope of finding Spurral.

Stryke did the logical thing and ordered the band to find a boat. They scoured the shore and came up with nothing except small canoes, totally unsuited for venturing out to sea. He considered building a boat, or possibly a raft. But with time at a premium, and his doubts about whether they could construct something truly seaworthy for who knew how long a voyage, that looked impractical.

Boat or no, their biggest problem was finding out where Spurral might have been taken. Jup's farsight was useless because a vast body of water like the ocean, he explained, gave off an energy of its own that swamped the pinpricks generated by living beings riding it. So they needed the dwarfs' help. Which proved harder than they had first thought, simply because the natives seemed to have disappeared. Some had obviously been taken by the raiders. They could only guess that the rest had gone into hiding, probably in the depths of the jungle, or perhaps in the labyrinth of tunnels that riddled the dead volcano.

Stryke decided to concentrate their efforts on finding them. Surveying the terrain from the highest point they could easily get to, which turned out to be the outcropping where the catapults stood, he hastily scrawled a crude map of the island. This he divided into more or less equal segments. Then he split the band into eight groups of four or five members each and allotted each group a segment to search.

His own group included Jup, Coilla and Reafdaw, who was one of the Wolverines' more experienced scouts. Stryke made a point of having Haskeer lead one of the groups assigned to the farthest tip of the island. He wanted to keep him and Jup apart for now, given their tendency to aggravate each other. That was a complication they could do without.